The Other Woman
by meanderling
Summary: Drabbles follow Cam, Booth and inevitably, Brennan, as they meet, remeet and come to terms.
1. She had the World

AN: You know, I've never written a drabble series before. But this one was kinda nagging at me. And I do love writing non-main characters, even if I don't love them quite as much as main characters. They're blank slates, with more room to grow. It will, eventually, be BB. Because whatever, I'm still a sucker for canon.

* * *

It was magic, it was chemistry, it was like that ABBA song. Just one look and bam! They were retarded for each other. It was only her first week at college, the big-city girl who thought she'd seen it all, a cynic and a bitchy one at that. But he showed her there was so much that she hadn't seen. He was a soldier, three years older than most of the other students because of his time active service. He had muscles and scars from fighting, his eyes were darkened by what he'd seen, but man, when he flashed that smile it was like there was nobody else in the world but them.

He was young, she was young, they were both closet romantics for all their tough-people facades. She was swept off her feet, quite literally. A dashing man in armor. Who could resist?

They snuck into the zoo for their first date. It was long after closing hours and most of the lights were off, but they still tried to muffle their laughter and speak in stage whispers as they climbed the fence. A blanket in a copse of trees outside of the giraffe exhibit. Her first time.

They lay together afterwards, staring at the stars, laughing at absolutely nothing at all. She wished sometimes, that they'd stay like that. Forever.

But they couldn't. She was from a tough neighborhood, but she knew just enough of his past to know that he'd known worse, far worse. He would get that dark, dark look in his eyes sometimes and she knew that he was way too far away, in uncharted waters she couldn't hope to reach. Then he'd snap out of it, and laugh, but it never reached his eyes.

They fought. Well--high spirits, alcohol and stress, youth and hormones, of course they fought. But they were too stubborn to reach out to each other afterwards. Maybe they'd just never cared enough.

They were in the middle of another fight when he got the letter. When he came into her room, she looked up hopefully: he never apologized, really, they just sort of forgot about fights. But maybe something's changed. But no. His eyes were dark and his mouth was drawn. He looked older, far older than his years. He sat down on her bed as she looked up from her books and handed her the letter wordlessly, not taking his eyes off her as she read.

"No," she said when she stopped reading, her dark eyes huge as she stared up into his drawn face. "No, no, no, no! You can't!" He shook his head. She swung her legs over the edge of the mattress and took his hands in his, eyes imploring him to look at her and smile that godforsaken charm smile and pretend it was all gone, like their fights, like his past, like the scars from his father on his back.

"Don't leave me." But his eyes remained on his shoes on the carpet. He loved her. But not enough.

"I have to," he said. "God, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Camille." She shook her head, tears falling already. The first of many, she thought.

"Don't call me Camille, Seeley." Her voice broke on his name.

"Don't call me Seeley, Camille." He tried to smile. It didn't reach his eyes.

"It's over, isn't it?" The tears had passed for the time being. She felt calm, with only the hard painful knot under her breastbone to pain her.

"I'm sorry, Cam." Will the man just stop saying that? He should say something else. She should say something. Instead, he just stood up. Looked backed at her once. Went out and locked the door. Then bent down and slipped his key under the doorframe. He was gone.


	2. Like Water in the Desert

If you would ever want to forget something, Seeley Booth thought, you should go to the desert. God, how could a place be so unrelenting? Heat that poured on you and cold that numbed you and that damned, shifting, eternal sand that got into everything. The place was so _dead_. Any delicacies or twisting turns of the mind was lost in the mindless race to save your own life from the onslaught.

All in all, an incredibly fitting place to be crouched in a crumbling building, streaked with dust, sweat and blood, holding a gun. The only solid thing in this damned place, with the crumbling walls and sandstorms and tents, the only comfort was the metal grip of his gun and maybe the stars. (Though even they were shifting. There was no Big Dipper here.)

Everything was shiftless. Everything ended. Nothing lasts.

Even faith.

God was hard to find in the desert, harder to find than water. Seeley had once thought that God was the only constant in his life, a Holy Father that loved him to make up for his earthly father. But who would believe in this hellhole? _Thou shalt not kill. _Seeley couldn't remember the last time he fell asleep without blood on his hands.

He thought of his father. Another broken man of war. Would he be like that someday? Sodden with alcohol and regrets and broken deep down, an angry black well of a man who tried to save himself the only way he knew how. Crouched in the darkness, he felt it ironic, darkly sarcastic that in the numbing depths of war was when he felt the closest to his father.


	3. Streetlight Soldiers

_Just a typical cop pounding her way through the city, _she thought. Hand on baton, hand on gun, eyes on her partner--a fifty-year-old veteran of the streets assigned to help the rookie find her way through New York City. Not that she needed it. She knew these streets inside and out, a staccato lacework in her mind. She knew about the gangs and drugs and street-corner mamas. She was born here, born for this.

_Were you, Camille? _

She had been smart, she knew that. Smart enough to think her way through elementary school despite the rickety classroom chairs and too-tired teachers and cement playgrounds with crushed needles in the corners. Smart enough to pore over her textbooks in middle school in the muddy light of the stairway long after her sister went to bed and her mother left for her second job and her father lay in bed because he was coughing too hard to go to work (again). Smart enough to know where to punch in high school, and when to leave. She got into college by fighting, by fleeing, and by working her ass off.

She fully intended to come back with a medical degree. Pull her mother, father and sister out of the maze of nearly-ghetto apartments. Then leave, go far, far away where the air was clear forever and she could have all the shiny lights and lab instruments she wanted.

So why the _hell _ was she pounding New York streets at three in the morning, waiting to get shot?

Was it because of him?

No.

Definitely not.

Not Seeley Booth.

Who was a soldier now.

Oh, God. Protect him. Please.

He was fighting in a war a thousand miles away, an ocean, a planet away. No letters. At first it was because the missions he was on were top secret. And then of course it was because they were totally over. And he never wrote her. Cam was not the kind of girl that broke first, cried first, definitely did not write first. And she damn wouldn't be this time.

But she walks the streets at three in the morning, gun in hand. Fighting her own war. For him. _ With him._


End file.
